That's right, -MAZAN- Flash of the Blade :) Many thanks to Hans from Sweden for lending it, and to Tomas for doing the actual dump. Unfortunately I broke JVS layer in my code so I'm unable, at the moment, to run it in emulator. It boots, sure, but dies with "I/O PCB ERROR" shortly after. So, the best I can show right now is this (don't quote me on the program checksum though, I got a bit creative with it before I made this screenshot):
Wait a minute, I do have a NAOMI2 box, right? A few emails later and some photos & manual exchanged, I've added another profile to my JVS I/O and it now spoofs the custom boards that came with the game. Still no go as there is a sanity check run on the sensors and I couldn's pass that, but at least I got the game test mode working:
Another hour or two spent patching the game program and finally this:
Yup, looks ugly. Sorry, the photo wasn't that great in the first place and you can tell some stuff is missing - like, the sky in background and half of the textures. I either messed up de-protecting the game or it just doesn't like being run from DIMM, much like HOTD2. Well, DIMM-enabled HOTD2 runs perfectly in emulator so I suspect addressing problem that only manifests itself on hardware. Whatever the cause, it's fixable - as soon as I figure it out :)
I've been also asked to do something about GDI format. The main issue is it keeps all the tracks in separate files and there are games with tons of digital audio. It doesn't carry any information about the game title either (especially if it's not an English one) or ring code - sometimes the only thing that allows you to tell GD-ROMs apart. Well, unless you can read the disc contents just by looking at it :)
It's primary purpose is to store Dreamcast-playable discs so it can handle GD-ROMs and MIL CD-ROMs (mostly because CDI format used so far is not exactly free, legally speaking). It's not all-purpose substitute for all optical media there is, thus simple and fast where it counts.
This is probably going to raise a few eyebrows in "What, another format?!" fashion, but don't worry. I'm not dropping support for GDI/CDI and ISO files, just adding one more. Whether or not this new format will become even remotely popular is not really my problem, the people who want to use it will do so. Some folks will also ask "Why not CHD then?" - well, I think CHD is great for MAME. And let's leave it at that.
Here's how a converter looks like (still WIP). Notice that you can store a small image within the file (256x256x32) so that it would be easier to identify the game. By default the image is that of GD texture used by BIOS in CD-player mode. Some games don't have it though, or there might be a better suited cover scan or photo, so it's possible to load an external one. It's completly optional but recommended.
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